Oops — North Carolina Accidentally Legalizes Fracking

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

North Carolina lawmakers have overridden Governor Bev Purdue’s veto of legislation legalizing and regulating hydraulic fracturing.
The override passed by a single vote. The only problem: the vote was cast accidentally.
Democrat Becky Carney intended to vote no, but mistakenly pushed the button for a “yea” vote.  As WRAL reports, her action gave the measure 72 votes – exactly the number needed for an override.

Carney characterized her vote as “very accidental.”
“It is late. Here we are rushing to make these kind of decisions this time of night,” she said.
Carney pointed out that she has voted against fracking in the past, and said she spent the day lobbying other Democrats to uphold the veto of Senate Bill 820.
“And then I push the green button,” she said.
Just after the vote, Carney’s voice could be heard on her microphone, saying “Oh my gosh. I pushed green.”

North Carolina procedure bars legislators from changing their votes, if the switch would affect whether or not a bill passes. So thanks to an accidental push of a button, fracking is now legal in the Tar Heel State.
More on this from the Atlantic, and Raleigh Observer.

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